ImprovFriday is now known as Sound-In and has a new blog at soundingsfromsoundin.wordpress.com. This archive blog is from the former ImprovFriday blog.

Category Archives: Thread

Welcome to another ‘Whats New At ImprovFriday’ blog entry. ImprovFriday is an online social music community where a number of our member artists gather each weekend and produce newly created musical works and publish to the world under Creative Commons license. Some weekend events are assigned a theme where each artist participating are encouraged to do something with the given theme but the choice is always left open. Other weekends are ‘anything goes’. Improvisation and spontaneous responses are encouraged. Often individual posted works are downloaded and combined with other works to produce a completely new piece, the process dubbed ‘mashing’.

This weekend’s suggested theme was ‘variations’. var·i·a·tion[s] (vâr-shn, vr-)
n. 1. a. The act, process, or result of varying. b. The state or fact of being varied. See Synonyms at difference. 2. The extent or degree to which something varies: a variation of ten pounds in weight. 3. Magnetic declination. 4. Something slightly different from another of the same type. 5. Biology
a. Marked difference or deviation from the normal or recognized form, function, or structure. b. An organism or plant exhibiting such difference or deviation. 6. Mathematics A function that relates the values of one variable to those of other variables. 7. Music a. A form that is an altered version of a given theme, diverging from it by melodic ornamentation and by changes in harmony, rhythm, or key. b. One of a series of forms based on a single theme. 8. A solo dance, especially one forming part of a larger work.

Whats New at ImprovFriday is a WordPress blog managed by ImprovFriday member artist Jim Goodin. Your comments are welcomed and if you are interested in creating or presently creating interesting musical works with an experimental bent, come join the community

I’ve been remiss for several weeks, months in writing about the weekly goings on at ImprovFriday, a New Music community on the Ning social network that is going on it’s three or four something year in steady active recorded musical artistry being produced each and every weekend without fail. ImprovFriday which can be accessed at http://improvfriday.com started as a hash tag on Twitter with initial energy of James Combs (aka J.C. and not the one in LA or Ohio 🙂 ) encouraging friends/fellow artists to produce a track of spontaneous music done on Friday. The idea evolved to a gathering of artists and then and I’m minimizing here, found a formal home on Ning which I joined about two years ago now through a friend/fellow artist from the Loopers-Delight community, Jeff Duke, maker of ‘other music’.

Each weekend as mentioned beginning just before the weekend, Thursday afternoon at 4pm PST and going through Saturday evening at 6pm PST, the ImprovFriday community holds a formal event ‘thread’ encouraging all interested to post new musical works ideally created within current time of the event under Creative Commons distribution, to the ImprovFriday site for world listening. The regularity of twenty-five to thirty artists from the community has gotten so tight and cohesive that the work produced though produced isolated, when heard together and many tracks get ‘mashed’ together, sound amazingly connected. In the last few months the work which has never been purposely curated or will be curated has evolved to occasionally be guided by a suggested ‘theme’ such as recent ones, politics, islands, fragile, voice and others. Then after a few weeks of ‘themed’ we will have our historical ‘free for all’ meaning anything goes which even on themed the option for anything goes is still there.

I referenced the term ‘mash’ earlier. Mash for the uninformed means in terms of music, sound, to take several audio works and layer them together in an audio mix and in turn they become a new compositional piece. Staff member Steve Layton often produces several amazing mash pieces in a given thread. One done this weekend that I really found moving was City of Glass Spires which featured works layered together of Chris Vaisvil, Kavin Allenson, Shane Cadman and Steve Moshier. This piece to my ears blended a sense of aural fantasies on Neptune’s waters with the Wizard of Oz glass slippers and it echoed the feeling of the whole weekend event.

Though the bulk of the work produced each weekend is aural occasionally a video piece is put together as in the case of one done this weekend by Kavin Allenson and photographer William Shannonhouse, celebrating the magical planet aligning recent date of November 11, 2011 or numerally spelled ‘111111’.

Benjamin Smith’s initial traditional acoustic piano piece indicative of the thought and development that often goes in to each artist’s work on ImprovFriday, starting with an idea and evolving often growing an entire journey of exploring.

And now an invitation to check out all the work produced this weekend (November 10 – 12, 2011) on ImprovFriday. Follow this link http://improvfriday.com for one contiguous musical stream and join us regularly beginning each pre-weekend Thursday at 4pm PST.

Quick post to note a few ImprovFriday happenings for the weekend of June 16 – 18, 2011. First staff mate Paul [Muller] has been far more consistent than I in doing reviews each week. He utilizes software to randomly select tracks to review from each ImprovFriday event thread. Each weekend his process selects several of the contributions he will do reviews in e-print. Those will follow with links below.

A very special acknowledgement I want to mention, this weekend we had a support drive to raise funds for hosting fees for our ImprovFriday site for the next year. There was a great unanimity in member donations and ImprovFriday wishes to express sincere thanks for the collective response. We are indeed all of ‘like mind and heart’.

Now Muller’s Random Picks for June 17, 2011

Here are this week’s random picks – selected as usual by my trusty random number generator. A bit shortened this week – I’ve been traveling and have house guests!

This is what I heard:

Hassam Jefee – 1st time participantFirst Trial 6-16-2011 – The first 20 seconds or so are silent, so give this a chance. Repetitive theme starts up with some accompanying percussion. Wow – some nice Oud playing there – Jim Goodin, call your office! Complex but not overwhelming – too short! Welcome to IF Hassam.

Jude CowanSummer Blue – Some nice ’50s sci-fi sounds here. Now vocals! Right on theme with some lovely soprano singing. The whirring sounds nicely follows the voice. Inventive story in the lyrics. Nicely done!

Richard SandersonShade – Cool, airy sounds. A high-pitched squeal from time to time, like a subway stopping. Low humming that varies in intensity. A definite underground feel – like a train tube or tunnel. A sense of remote motion – something coming our way? Intriguing…

Jukka-Pekka KervinenE2cEydr – Bleeps and a sort of rushing sound. A busy-ness apparent here. Almost sounds like an animal rummaging around – the image I get from this piece is surprisingly rural!

Peter ThörnPitter Patter – At first this sounds a bit like a new version of the classic ‘Dog Dish’ piece from a week or so ago. Now I get it – a light summer rain beating down on a wash tub. Now the rain comes down faster – or maybe hail? As suddenly as it starts, it is over. The summer squall!

Steve Layton10am in Summer (feat. Kavin Allenson, Bruce Hamilton & Steve Layton, Paul Muller) – Some happy guitar and a sort of warm undertone. Now violins on top. It is mid-morning on a summer’s day and the whole world is in front of you! Reminds me a bit of Crosby, Stills and Nash without the vocal harmony. Well-crafted and on-theme.

Kavin Allensoniced tea and pernod – Voices – almost chanting, and laughing. Now whistling and whispering ‘summer’. Ah, I see now – iced tea. Very much on theme – could be druids celebrating the solstice. Nicely done.

Roger “ErocNet” SundströmHammer – Just what the title says! But with echo and reverb – like hammering on an open pipe or tube. A low background harmony underneath adds to the atmosphere. Like the sounds of an abandoned ship adrift at sea.

Benjamin SmithBen.improv.Jun.12.2011 – Something new! A kind of Brazilian/JP Kervinen sound here – electronic but with a dance beat – needs a whistle :). Becomes a sort of conversation towards the end – Very inventive.

Steve MoyesSomething Like Summer – Some slick electric guitar riffs that could have come from the Beach Boys – lots of echo. I see a wide expanse of empty sand by the sea in bright sunshine. Turns a bit mysterious at 3:40. Definitely fits the theme!

Well it was a marvelous creative muse happening this weekend at ImprovFriday, where every weekend is a marvelous creative muse actually and it keeps getting better and better as we go as a community. I’ve been a member there now for the last year and few months and every weekend is just a treat. This weekend we were pleased to 2 new folks join with us and participate in the ImprovFriday thread event, Jude Cowan and T.H. aka Terry Horn. Welcome folks!

Few projects of note that have been produced by the ImprovFriday community in recent weeks are the first ever ImprovFriday Film Festival which was a huge success. Check out the video works from this event at theImprovFriday Film Festival I. With the horrific events that occurred in Japan ImprovFriday hosted a weekend long benefit event encouraging support of the relief work being done by the Red Cross. An online album to ongoing encourage support of the Red Cross effort for the Japanese people was released on BandCamp, For Japan.

I want to mention that ImprovFriday Radio podcast host Paul Muller has published a new episode review new work by several of the ImprovFriday family. Check it out on Podomatic.com at ImprovFriday Radio.

Buds by Jim Goodin

Colour by Jim Goodin

The following is our track list of the weekend from the ImprovFriday front page, additionally I’ve posted a few review notes by ImprovFriday member artist Chris Vaisvil. Thanks Chris for giving us some of your thoughts.

Wow what a thread this past weekend (February 3 – 5, 2011) on the ImprovFriday music event! It’s called a ‘thread’ both in the traditional Internet forum sense whereby it’s continued discussions all connected and on the same bridge of thought/interest, and in the case of our community it’s tying a series of musical pieces all created in the 2 plus days together.

Tools of IF member, Richard Sanderson

This blog was created initially to be a mini-review/commentary posting on the compositions made each weekend thread event but due to the incredible volume of material created (always a tremendous positive to the success of this community), it’s become difficult for me to cover everything and get it posted. Early on ImprovFriday member Paul Muller and I were doing the blog in tandem. Due to Paul’s commitments it drifted to me but I’m pleased to welcome Paul back for this edition with several comments drawn from the recent thread. Additionally I have posted a few this time and between us I’m pleased to say we’ve reviewed at least one work by each participating artist this time. As always links (blue font of each song title) to the MP3 audio file are provided for each work so you may listen or download.

Lee Noyes in Performance at Radio Cegeste - DPAG

A note from Paul in fact about how he selected pieces to review this weekend.

‘I’ve been wanting to get back to making some comments on the weekly pieces but we are producing so much good material it is difficult to do it comprehensively :=) So I’m trying random selections this week.

That’s right – I used a random number generator to create a table of random numbers 1 to 50. I then listened to the Saturday 2-5-11 front page IF list in that order (skipping duplications) for about an hour.’ [editor’s note: The selections reviewed by Paul are tagged as are mine.]

finger picked and slide used on hammer dulcimer – Love the lap dulcimer from my Mountain View days. Chris nice exploring in all these particularly this one that borders eastern world at times both the ‘Far’ and India with sounds of the sympathetic strings of the sitar and at times well taking me back to the square in Mountain View. – Jim.

It passed right through me (feat. Kavin Allenson, Gérald DeGroote, Chris Vaisvil, Jeff Fairbanks) – Love this title and mood Steve. Excellent mash that’s right in the vogue of Twilight Zone, It Came from Outer Space and Stephen King! Great crew in this one with Kavin and Chris’s organic and Gerald and Jeff’s playful colours. – Jim.

prehensile amoeba thumbtack – Well I gotta comment on this one just for the title Kavin. Heavy reverberant metallic electric here that sounds really cool, vintage and foreign at the same time. Cool scale throughout in the lines. – Jim.

Desobering Mexico (feat. Jim Goodin, Lee Noyes, Jerome Poirier, Richard Sanderson) – Well I have to comment on this one to at the least say thank you for responding to my work that was done now 4 years ago, I’m flattered. This was one of my first experiences with both fretless guitar and looping. Without sounding to ‘self-involved’ I like the organic contrasts brought to the mash with the spacial of Lee, Jerome and Richard. Really flattered you used ‘Mexico’ as a foundation. – Jim.

Holes In The Map – Tremendous subtleness in your work Richard and yet well connected tonality from space to space. Cool doploristic effect early on in the piece. I can see how your work, Lee and Jerome’s balances so well, I think of all three of you in this piece. – Jim.

AMR #1 (Lenin) – We are in a subterranean tunnel of some kind – a dull banging and movement in the background. A sort of motion is suggested by low tones and hums with a high pitch barely audible sneaking in and out – all of this produces a definite sense of tension. All of the sounds here are very delicate – never overpowering – yet subltly effective in building the mood. – Paul.

Thurman&Vajda – Adam yey! You have returned to the fold. We have missed you and welcome home. You come up with the greatest commentary man, spoken word here and even what I can’t understand just flows. Nice ending with the bell as well. Don’t leave us. – Jim.

Doux Méandres – Paul Horn and memories of something I did a bunch of years ago when I first discovered ‘tape echo’ and with ‘tape’. Lovely echoing Gerald. Does remind me of those Paul Horn recordings in the Taj Mahal. – Jim.

North Bis (feat. Richard Sanderson, Gérald DeGroote) – North Bis (feat. Richard Sanderson, Gerald DeGroote) – Low bass provides a solid foundation for a series of high, flashing sounds that weave in and out. Good use of edgy squeals and pitches here that contrast nicely with the bass line. Good to have Gerald back at IF! – Paul.

Subsistence (feat. Jeff Fairbanks, Johnny & Faith, Jérôme Poirier) – Wonderful mash Jukka! Like the angelic voicing going on with the emerging noise filtering mid-way and then the evolving to more mystical place, breaths against the almost carosel Cirque du Solei feel at end. – Jim.

Paul H. Muller

Long Key String – Just something very positive and whole in your pieces Paul. There’s some of the early Windham Hill days of Tim Story who I always thought was a very understated artist in Will’s early catalog and then there is more range of color than that. Your church and classical music love shine through and that’s true here. – Jim.

IF – Impatient – Andy beautiful piece and lovely touch. Sounds like you are of all the patience in the world really at least in the opening moments then it becomes a bit more edgee but that’s contrast and dig it! – Jim.

Ken Ficara

Moi – I’m now thinking what a cool mash it would have been between Gerald’s Paul Hornish piece previously noted and your piece here Ken, a thought for this next week. Tones really hang here. Wonder what all you have going on with your instruments? Delta feel in the later part, digging it! – Jim.

Enough About Moi – Good use of harmonica here (I wish we heard more harmonica). Produces an intriguing ambience. The texture builds interestingly with a series of overlapping trills. Like the recorder, the harmonica seems to be one of those over-looked instruments that can produce serious music in the right hands… – Paul.

Jeff Duke

Naive Prepared Piano – John C would have dug it Jeff. Got a feeling this is all software driven as you’ve been digging some new tools. Good space in here that could make Mr Noyes proud and speaking of… – Jim.

Lee Noyes & Radio Cegeste - DPAG

Lee Noyes

Prosoche – Attention / mindfulness according to the Web and I would say very true here as the water flows from trickle to flowing to space to wading about. I remember a drainage ditch near my house where I grew up and I would go play there. In those days it wasn’t so polluted and it was really a concrete type of reservoir sort of a mini waterway canal like they have in LA. Anyhow reminds me of that as well as going down in to the storm cellar that we had but I digress. Distant musicality appearance of the wind instrument is welcome dimension, man Lee we need cameras here to see you at work. – Jim.

Jérôme Poirier

Portrait of Plastic and Wooden Pearls – Though seemingly acoustic sounds here I can also hear it as ‘noise filtering’ in to percussive patches. Nicely woven together as you ‘paint’ Jerome. Wooden Pearls wooden nickel, wonder… – Jim.

Shane W. Cadman

Piece020411 – Glasslike and angular, guitarlike in nature and maybe it is but thinking keyboard and patches. Regardless remniscent of earthy rock guitar and world colors at the same time. – Jim.

The Climb Above Freezing – Nice evolution in this one Paul. Starts out your ethereal present halls of the church sound but compositionally and tonally moves through modern playful at times sounds. Nice airy ending high note. – Jim.

Steve Moyes

Lean – Low droning reminds one of a large animal or big machine – lovely pitches mixing down there! Now a series of high and mid-range pitches enter providing a bit of light. The sounds becomes richer at 3:30 – nice music here. More desolate now at 4:30… Interesting flute sounds at 5:40 – a kind of high chattering at 6:30. The low drones seem to shadow each change in the texture creating an ominous foundation throughout. Well crafted! – Paul.

Steve Moshier and Liguid Skin LIVE

Steve Moshier55 Days in Peking – More full-on Moshier. Fills the senses with moving sounds and chords – Moshier always paints a vivid picture. I tried to mix something using this but this Steve’s work is generally so complete and self-contained I have yet to succeed. – Paul.

Kenneth Palmer

Egyptian Two Step – As JC has pointed out, something of a milestone work for our friend from St. Louis. Incorporating the sounds and events in Egypt this past week this piece reproduces the uneasiness we are all feeling as we watch the news. Along with Adam and others, the political dimension here lately makes for facinating listening. – Paul.

Jeff Fairbanks

zo vo – Great vocal treatment here set against a conventional background. Very cool sounds! Too short – more would have been better 🙂 – Paul.Johnny & Faith

Strange Eon Drive One – Well crafted angelic opening that rises up like a spring from the ground, then drifts on to subtle demonic voices surfacing in the score and they drift out as the piece moves akin to a space probe in search of discovery. – Jim.

still born – Wonderful rising tone mixed with beeps and burbles. We are on some sort of cosmic elevator, the floors are flying by… Now we are in orbit trying to call home with a dial-up modem. The pitch is descending now, we are coming back – a sort of lonely feeling here. The sudden ending makes the point… – Paul.

[editor’s note – further words from Paul captured from a blog posted on ImprovFriday.]

In Addition –

Thanks to Bruce Hamilton and Steve Layton for using my Long Key String in their mashups.

Good to have Adam back from the political barricades in Budapest. Nice to have Gerald back as well.

Hope JC is feeling better after his encounter with the bubble ball.

And a Few Favorites –

Everything I heard this week is of very high quality. And here are some that I thought were especially good. Keep in mind I am not listening to everything – and I have certain tastes – but these seemed to speak to me this week.

Norbert Oldani – <a href="“>Dream On – Another in a series incorporating the spoken word (thanks Adam!). I thought the background here was perfectly chosen and the text poetic and meaningful.

Ben Smith – Improv Jan 31 2011.2 – Another great piano solo in that spare, almost European style we hear from Ben every so often. Cried out for a mix – so I did one 🙂 – Paul

ImprovFriday Radio

So that’s it for this weekend. A few reminders, check out the ImprovFriday Radio podcast series at the noted hyperlink in blue, come visit us at our ImprovFriday homepage at ImprovFriday.Ning.com and information about the ImprovFriday Vol I and II CD releases is available at Amaranth Records. Additionally there is some interesting work being posted in between weekend events on the ImprovFriday Afterhours page on Facebook. Search us to check out.

ImprovFriday is an online experimental music community where each Thursday afternoon through Saturday night at 10:00 EST, 20-30 musical artists from around the world gather to celebrate their muse and music by publishing one to several pieces to the ImprovFriday site for public listening and further input by artists within the community.

This is just a sampling of the wonderful work created over the weekend. Come check out the complete thread of New Music at http://improvfriday.ning.com.

In addition to the recorded work ImprovFriday hosted two live video webcast concerts on Saturday (January 29, 2011), Rainer Straschill and Stephen Goodman. ImprovFriday will be hosting more live events in the coming weeks so do check the website for schedule updates and consider joining the ImprovFriday community and receive regular email notices.

A closing note, from all at the ImprovFriday community we want to acknowledge and express our sadness but tremendous thankfulness to the ‘life in music’ given by Milton Byron Babbit who passed away on Saturday, January 29, 2011, at the age of 94. Babbitt was particularly noted for his interest and work in serial and electronic composition. Babbitt became interested early on in the Second Viennese School of music composition led by Arnold Schoenberg. In 1958, Babbitt achieved unsought notoriety through an article in the popular magazine High Fidelity (Babbitt 1958). His title for the article, “The Composer as Specialist”, was changed, without his knowledge or consent, to “Who Cares if You Listen?” More than 30 years later, he commented that, because of that “offensively vulgar title”, he was “still … far more likely to be known as the author of ‘Who Cares if You Listen?’ than as the composer of music to which you may or may not care to listen” (Babbitt 1991, 17). For more on the life of Milton Babbitt visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Babbitt.

This present weekends (January 6 – 8, 2011) ImprovFriday music and sound thread event was tremendous. To say it overshadows the past is not fair as the connectivity of this community is too special to suggest benchmarks. However at times the ‘muse’ is flowing as one multi-textural inspired stream between all of us who gather via wire each weekend to participate by creating a piece(s) and posting for the world to experience.

Image by Chris Vaisvil

Last spring for a few weeks I tried to document each weekend by ‘mashing’ bits/pieces of all who participated. This weekend called to be documented. I titled the mash, ‘Sliding on the Dancefloor‘ and it can be heard here.